Documenting Displacement: Syrian Refugee-Led Justice Practices in Türkiye

Türkiye hosts the world’s largest refugee population, yet no formal transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms exist to address displacement-related harms. In this context, Syrian refugees and civil society actors have developed their own grassroots documentation practices, collecting testimonies, digital archives, and advocacy materials that record rights violations, displacement experiences, and collective memories. This poster explores how these bottom-up initiatives function as mechanisms of truth-seeking, recognition, and remembrance in the absence of state-led TJ processes. Rather than interpreting refugee-led documentation through existing paradigms, the research approaches these practices as innovative forms of justice-making that expand the conceptual boundaries of TJ. This case contributes to the GROUNDOC project’s broader aim of reconstructing transitional justice “from the ground up,” offering insights into how documentation in aparadigmatic contexts can generate new epistemologies of justice and memory.